Quite So New
by Mad Maudlin
Summary: i my body when it is with your body


Quite So New

by Mad Maudlin

i like my body when it is with your

body. It is so quite a new thing.

Muscles better and nerves more.

i like your body. i like what it does,

i like its hows. i like to feel the spine

of your body and its bones, and the trembling

-firm-smooth ness and which i will

again and again and again

kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,

i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz

of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes

over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big Love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

—_e.e. cummings_

Hermione stepped out of the shower and toweled herself off briskly, trying her best to wring out the great dripping mass of her hair. She really should get it cut shorter, it would be so much more practical—but she would also probably end up looking like a poodle if she did. A poodle that had stuck its tail in a light socket. She wiped a stripe through the fog on the mirror and frowned at herself, at how her hair managed to look wildly bushy even when it was dripping enough water to irrigate a small desert for a year.

Not that she cared about her hair. Not that much, anyway. There were more important things to worry about than appearances.

Though just once—she turned to the long mirror on the back of the door and wiped it down, too—just once in a while she did like to think of herself as pretty. Her hair could be quite flat if she applied enough potion—she knew that from experience. The Yule Ball. The last time, come to think of it, she had felt really pretty—in spite of everything. Slughorn's party last year hadn't quite had the same luster. But at the Yule Ball, oh, she had seen heads turning. She had felt beautiful.

Things changed, though, in three years. Bodies changed. Well, her hair hadn't, and neither had her breasts—she could still fit each comfortably in her palm with room to spare—but at fifteen she still hadn't really had much in the way of hips. She was making up for that lost time now, wasn't she? She ran her hands along the deep curve of her waist and down to her thigh, watching how her skin dimpled under her fingers, and wondered at the hormonal mysteries that could so endow her at one end and completely ignore the other. Not that she minded—she wasn't obsessed with her appearance, unlike some people—but deep down she had to admit that there were more aesthetically pleasing places to stretch one's robes than below the waist.

She made a quarter-turn, examining herself in profile. Her hair really did want cutting, if not poodle-short; it was nearly to the small of her back, and shaggy besides. She ran a hand down her back, feeling where the wet tangles gave way to shower-warmed skin. Her buttocks had blossomed almost as much as her hips, from all the sitting and reading she did—but no one in the wizarding world jogged, she reminded herself, or did aerobics or even yoga like her mother on Thursdays. They just played Quidditch, and that was one thing she had finally given up trying to comprehend. Besides, she didn't care if she had a large behind. At least her stomach was flat.

Well. Mostly flat.

Flatter than Lavender Brown's, anyway.

The mirror had fogged up again. Hermione wiped it clear and looked, really looked at herself. The mole on her neck. Small breasts. Her armpits—she hadn't bothered shaving recently, anywhere, because who was going to see it, and anyway for a brunette it was a losing battle from the start. Even when she bothered she had speckles afterwards, not really stubble, but little dark spots just under her skin where the stubble was going to be in a day or two. Easier to just cover it up.

She looked at her hips. Her flatter-than-Lavender's tummy. The long fine hairs on her thighs and her thick ankles. No—she refused to feel bad about her ankles. They were just ankles. They existed to keep her feet attached to her legs, not as sex objects.

She had hair on her toes, too.

"Stop it," she hissed to herself, and grabbed her fluffy old bathrobe off the hook. It was just a bit too big for her, reaching well past her knees; after she wrapped her hair in a towel-turban and shoved her feet into a pair of soft slippers, she could hardly see any bits of herself in the filmy mirror. And she was happy that way. It was all for the best.

-/--/--/-

Ron briefly wondered exactly how long Harry could stay in the shower. He'd been _joking_ when he said he was used to running out of hot water; it was starting to look like he wouldn't even get any to start with. Harry hadn't always been such a bath-hog, had he?

Hell, he might as well just wait until morning. Ron dug his pajamas out of his bag and stripped off his T-shirt and vest, neither of which he intended to wear again without a good long washing. Movement caught his eye, and it took him a moment to realize that Harry had left the wardrobe door cracked a bit, just enough for the mirror on the inside of the door to reflect. Ron thought about closing it, and even crossed the room and grabbed the handle, but at the last minute he pulled the door open instead. The mirror reflected him, standing there bare-chested with his belt buckle undone. Just him. It didn't even comment.

Ron didn't spend a whole lot of time looking in mirrors as a rule—it generally led to nothing good. Not that he was ugly or anything, because he wasn't, but he also wasn't...well. Nobody from _Witch Weekly_ was going to be showing up at his door any time soon. Their male cover models tended to have more in the shoulder-span department, for one thing, and a quite a bit more chest hair besides. Fred and George said a recent one actually bought a potion from them, to get more.

Ron wasn't sure even a potion could help him. He rubbed his jaw experimentally, and then ran a palm down his breastbone, but there wasn't anything more there than there'd been a month ago. Or six months. Or six years, come to think of it. Hell, Harry had been shaving once a week since the end of summer, and he had a whole colony of curly black hairs growing along his breastbone. Maybe it was just because his hair was darker.

Ron did have ribs, though, lots of them—if he sucked in a breath he could count almost all of them. And if he exhaled really deep, sucked in his stomach all the way, the bottom row stuck out so sharply—he poked, and yep—he could actually stick his fingers up under them, just a little bit. Maybe he'd show Harry that later, for a laugh. He was pretty sure the blokes who made the cover of _Witch Weekly_ couldn't do that.

Somehow that didn't make him feel better about the whole thing.

'Cause those blokes, they were...well...his mum _sighed_ over them, when she didn't think his dad was looking. Ginny sighed sometimes. Not that Ron wanted his mum or sister to be sighing like _that_ over _him_ (that'd be weird, just too weird) but there were...other girls...he wouldn't mind getting a little heavy breathing out of. Lavender had been a good snog and all, but she'd never actually sighed over him, not like that. She sighed over the blokes with the hairy chests and the big shoulders and the nice arses and the tans, the ones on the magazine covers, not over him.

Ron had never been tan in his life; the nearest he'd ever been was pink with extra freckles, which probably did look a bit like a skin disease from a distance. And—he was going to have to face it—he didn't even _have_ an arse. He turned around and looked over his shoulder, looked at the wasteland between his back and legs. It just wasn't there. He pushed down his jeans a bit, but his boxers just sort of hung slack. He sort of wiggled his hips a bit—no good. You'd think all the extra Quidditch of the past two years might've done _something_ for it, but no, nothing. Fred and George said some girls like to grab arses during, y'know, sort of like handles. Ron supposed that if he lived long enough to get some proper _y'know, _the girl in question would just have to find something else to grab onto. Maybe his ears—they were big enough...

The dull roar from the bathroom finally stopped, and Ron had just enough time to get his clothes back on before Harry came out, still toweling off his hair, glasses dangling from his teeth by one ear piece. "Thorry," he said.

"No problem," Ron said, snatching his towel. "Thought you were gonna drown in there."

"Lotht track o' time."

"Don't worry about it." Ron picked up his pyjamas and slipped into the bathroom, and was briefly grateful for thick skin of steam that covered the mirrors before he leapt under the spray.

-/--/--/-

There weren't any showers the next night, or the night after that, but the night after the night after that, they got to celebrate. It's not every day you destroy ancient artifacts imbued with bits of pure evil, after all, and after enough ale bathing starts to seem like a triviality anyway.

When Hermione announced she was cutting herself off and attempted to teeter up to bed, Ron was a little too eager to help her up to her room, and neither of them saw Harry roll his eyes at their backs. They staggered up the steep, narrow stairs of the inn and bumped along the corridor to their rooms: Ron's arm sloped low to steady her at precisely the place where her breasts met her armpits, and Hermione clung tightly to Ron's waist, fingers curled into his belt, head tucked against his shoulder even though the position gave her a significant starboard list.

They plowed through the door of Hermione's room and didn't stop until they tumbled over the bed, giggling stupidly at their own flailing. There was a moment of confused shifting and wriggling until they were both sitting upright, without managing to let each other go.

"Um," Hermione said, and stifling another giggle. "Thank you for walking me up."

"'Snothing," Ron said with a grin. "Didn't want you to get lost."

"Lost? D'you know how tiny this place is?"

"What if you'd gone in the wrong room?" Ron said, and shrugged in a way that joggled Hermione's head. "You might've ended up in someone else's bed."

"Mmm, wouldn't want that," Hermione said. "Ought to stay in our own beds."

"Yeah," Ron said, and a blush built and built from his neck up to his hairline until he brought himself down to kiss her, wetly, on the side of the mouth. Hermione turned her head enough to kiss him back properly, and held onto his neck to keep him from letting go.

One of Ron's large hands started at Hermione's hip and traveled slowly upwards until it was splayed out across her ribs, just barely brushing the underwire of her bra. He turned his mouth aside from hers and muttered, "Can I?"

Hermione's face flamed, and she squirmed a bit, but said, "If you want."

Ron pulled back suddenly. "Sorry," he whispered.

"What? No—" Hermione grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. "I just meant you shouldn't, you don't have to, just because—"

"I want to."

Hermione blushed, and daringly grabbed Ron's wrist and brought his hand up to cover her breast, practically smothering it. Ron gasped and squeezed, then shifted his hand so he could knead it with his fingers. Hermione sighed into his mouth and let her hands slide lower, over his back, down to his belt and then below—

Ron squawked into her mouth and went rigid. "Sorry," Hermione blurted, withdrawing. "I didn't mean to—erm."

"You didn't mean to?" Ron said, with both of his hands suddenly on his own knees.

"I don't want to upset you."

"You didn't—er." Ron swallowed. "Just. Surprised me, is all."

"Sorry." Hermione's face was very red.

Ron looked away for a moment, then hesitantly grabbed Hermione's hand. "D'you want to...?" he asked.

Hermione leaned in and kissed him again, and slowly they slid back together. When Ron palmed her breast, Hermione held her breath, but she didn't pull away. When she slid her hands into Ron's back pockets, he exhaled loudly but didn't move.

When Hermione pulled herself even closer, practically into Ron's lap, he whimpered and pulled away with a horrified expression. "Sorry," he whispered.

Hermione watched his face carefully and repeated the motion. "Is that...for me?"

Ron gurgled.

She kissed him again, and with her wand she put out all the lights.

"Hermione..." Ron managed to say without squeaking, "are you sure about this?"

"Yes, I am." Hermione's hands froze on his belt buckle. "If you are."

Ron exhaled shakily and put both his hands firmly on her hips. "I'm sure."

-/--/--/-

"You're beautiful, you know?"

"You think so?"

"Yeah. Think you're gorgeous."

"Thank you."

"'S true."

"I think you're beautiful too."

"What? No."

"What?"

"Blokes can't be beautiful."

"Well, handsome, then."

"...you really think so?"

"I really do."

"Love you."

"I love you, too."


End file.
